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Gene cheats

15 January 2000

By Christie Aschwanden in Nederland, Colorado

A TENSE HUSH falls on the Olympic stadium as the sprinters crouch on the starting blocks for the men’s 100-metres final. With the 2008 Olympic games in full swing, athletes have shattered records as never before, usually by an ample margin. Television ratings are soaring, and as the finalists prepare to compete for the title of world’s fastest man, the crowd expects the winner to obliterate this record, too.

Though the Olympic flame still burns in the stadium, these athletes are nothing like their heroic predecessors. Athletes of old honed their bodies with toil and sweat, but at the 2008 games most of the champions have altered their genes to help them excel at their sport. Weightlifters’ arms and sprinters’ thighs bulge as never before, and long-distance runners have unparalleled stamina-all the result of a few crucial genetic upgrades. Officials are well aware that such “gene doping” is going on, but as the practice is virtually undetectable, they are powerless to stop it.

This may sound like the ultimate sporting nightmare, but the technology to make it come true could well arrive even before 2008. Scientists around the world are working to perfect gene therapies to treat genetic diseases. Soon, unscrupulous athletes may be able to use them to re-engineer their bodies for better performance.

Need more endurance? Add a gene to bolster delivery of oxygen to labouring tissues. Want bigger muscles? Inject them with a gene that will make them grow. Both techniques are under development, and if they work in humans as they do in lab animals, they will change the face …